Colonial life - Economic
During the time of the American colonies they ran on the economic system of mercantilism, which was very popular in the 1600s and 1700s. This was basically the belief that for a country to be powerful and rich it had to accumulate a lot of gold and silver. The way to do this, in a nutshell, was to export more goods from your country then you imported, causing more gold and silver to flow into your economy then to flow out. The way they saw to do this was to have a vast majority of raw materials in your country so that you didn't have to buy these from other countries. That's where the colonies came in. It was seen that the 13 colonies of the new world were there to do nothing more than to provide Britain with raw materials for basically dirt cheap, to help Britain become more powerful. The benefits for the colonies was that it made it so that there was always trade to take their raw materials and an eager dealer to trade them the goods that they needed. The problem was that because it was believed that the colonies were only there to support the mother country, they were not LEGALLY allowed to trade with other countries. So if Britain didn't want fish, the fisherman made no gold. If they didn't need lumber, the wood would sit there till they did and the lumberjacks made no gold. This is what lead to triangular trade and smuggling with the colonies.